In that case, sure, I guess? (Although making it use the game gear's inputs sounds painful, bit I'm sure you could rig it up)

Like I said, though. I think both sides of the argument miss the right answer, which is "people can do whatever cool thing they want, who has a right to call it cheating?"

Author:

rainwarrior [ Fri May 26, 2017 8:02 pm ]

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Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

The notion of "cheating" here is totally bogus, IMO. I don't think you need to try and rationalize it with criteria.

There are plenty of things that make MMC5 (or analogous thing) a poor solution if you have particular problems, but every one of them is a personal "if" about that specific problem.

Sometimes it's annoying when someone aggressively assumes that you have the same problems as them and want to "help" you with advice, but sometimes the same really is helpful because you do have those problems. Perhaps it is well meaning, but can becomes a nuisance... it's hard to know where to stop, and sometimes even advice that is truly helpful is annoying at the same time, unfortunately. (I'm sure I've annoyed many here with both helpful and unhelpful advice...)

I think the most careful approach begins with the question: "What do you want to do?"

Often this question cannot be cleanly asked, though. Conversations are rather complicated and difficult structures.

Author:

tokumaru [ Fri May 26, 2017 8:38 pm ]

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Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

I agree that you can't objectively say what's cheating and what's not. I'll probably consider cheating stuff that deviates too much from the typical experience of playing a game. If I can buy a cartridge, insert it into the console and play it without hassle, I probably won't be bothered by what's inside the cartridge.

But if the thing is way too expensive due to having an entire more powerful console inside, if I have to plug lots of extra cables (power, video, etc.), if it uses a different type of media, or anything else that's too different from the usual experience, then yeah, I'd probably call it cheating, because you, the player, is required to do things differently from the expected for playing games on the machine in question. The hardware wasn't able to adequate itself to the regular distribution model.

The reason I don't consider the FDS, Sega CD or the 32X cheating is because their games aren't sold as Famicom or Genesis games, they carry the name of the extra hardware required to run them.

Author:

Oziphantom [ Fri May 26, 2017 11:34 pm ]

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Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

It is good to hear that other communities are just as random as C64 one

SuperCPU ( aka 20mhz 65816 + 128K RAM expansion ) - 100% cheating not even a thing how could youRam Expansion Unit - Officially made by Commodore - cheating, its NOT a 641MB bankable flash cart with usb connection and an extra 256bytes of RAM - the most purist thing ever and eveything should use it for it is great and allows us to have better stuff... Hell even a C128 is a faux pas...

Author:

FrankenGraphics [ Fri May 26, 2017 11:56 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

For me one of the important things with the mmc5 would be what it lets you focus on. The larger tile map is perhaps less evident than the 8x8 attribute resolution, but it essentially means you can have lots of details/smooth animations without bothering with continous uploads on a per instance basis or need to severely limit the number of types/objects. This should leave you with a bit more unreserved computing bandwidth to focus on something you find interesting without having to sacrifice anything in the visual department. Ultimately, it supports designing games with fluent action and/or responsive, interactive environments. With greater possibilities comes a larger project, though...

Author:

tepples [ Sat May 27, 2017 5:32 am ]

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Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

Perhaps the C128 is cheating for the same reason the SuperGrafx is: almost no one has one.

Author:

Oziphantom [ Sat May 27, 2017 6:52 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

C128 is not "cheating" ,just a faux pas. Which is basically down to the misconception that is offers nothing over the C64, or very little over C64 and thus any game for it could be done on the C64 for the general masses and not us snobby rich kids with a 128. In actual fact the 128 is like a PS2, look at it normally and basically its a PS1 and you get PS1 levels with a little bit more, once you understand it and hunt around the quirky systems you can really get some extra omph out it, just nobody has (yet).

Fun Fact : There are more C128s than 8bit Apple IIs only one is seen as a failure and the other is the all amazing machine that defined computers that everybody rushed to buy

Did Super Grafix even leave Japan? I recently tried to work out the NEC console line up and I just got lost in it...

Author:

tepples [ Sat May 27, 2017 7:39 am ]

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Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

I was mistaken. Perhaps U.S. school computer labs full of platinum enhanced Apple IIe computers gave me a misconception.

Where the C128 is touted as selling in the 5~6 million range, Wikipedia lists it as 5.7million.

Now if School computers don't count as "sales" and hence are not listed, that would change the equations. Apple are a very American centric computer, we had them at my school, but we had 3 IIes and a IIgs. Commodore wins because they were worldwide, so there will be more Apple IIs in the USA(as USA is the bulk market for Apple ) but more C128s in the world( Were Germany and UK where the big markets ). For example Apples IIs are only colour in NTSC, they are monochrome in PAL land, unless you bought the custom colour monitor for them. Mean while the 1/3 price C64 is colour on a TV, it was a very hard sell. Apple big and basically only push was Education software, but outside of the USA the USA software is unusable, seeing as the C64 was king in the UK, most of the education software was converted to English for the C64, with only the biggest titles or titles that didn't need localisation being sold for the Apple IIs here. For example at my school we never had the Oregon Trail, we had Maths Blaster.

Author:

rainwarrior [ Sat May 27, 2017 9:27 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

My elementary school had ~30 Apple IIgs computers, maybe 5 IIe and a single C64 that didn't get used much. Later on they got a few Mac Classics too. I wonder what they have now 20 something years later...

I'd always presumed the IIgs was the most popular variant of Apple II, but perhaps it was just down to timing of when my school decided to budget for computers, and their price at that moment. I don't remember the school having much IIgs specific software though, so using the IIe vs IIgs had some "feely" differences of keyboard etc. for us but not much else.

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lidnariq [ Sat May 27, 2017 10:40 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

Oziphantom wrote:

SuperCPU ( aka 20mhz 65816 + 128K RAM expansion ) - 100% cheating not even a thing how could you

For absolutely no good reason, the idea of grafting an SA-1 onto random other CPUs/consoles amuses me greatly. Still as a coprocessor, not replacement CPU like that is.

Author:

Espozo [ Sat May 27, 2017 11:28 am ]

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Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

I really haven't ventured out of this website much for discussion of old computer hardware, but I've never once heard someone say "cheating" in this context. I'd think most people would be smart enough to judge games with different hardware separately, even if they are running on the same base system. However, outside of old computer hardware websites and whatnot, I know people will often act as if a game using more advanced hardware through some sort of expansion is more impressive than it is. Most every list of "most impressive SNES games" will list Star Fox, when I don't think the SNES is doing much of anything except one big DMA transfer during vblank. Frankly, I don't even know if the game is that impressive for the Super FX. Regarding that, when it comes to expansion hardware, I really don't think you can just say "impressive", but rather impressive for the base hardware, or impressive for the add on hardware. This is only relevant with coprocessors, which are a separate entity. With just a ram expansion, there would be no distinction between impressive for the base hardware and impressive for the add on hardware.

Author:

Hojo_Norem [ Sat May 27, 2017 11:40 am ]

Post subject:

Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

Oziphantom wrote:

It is good to hear that other communities are just as random as C64 one

SuperCPU ( aka 20mhz 65816 + 128K RAM expansion ) - 100% cheating not even a thing how could youRam Expansion Unit - Officially made by Commodore - cheating, its NOT a 64

MY take on this is that these devices are both out of production and can be hard to come by and expensive... but:

Quote:

1MB bankable flash cart with usb connection and an extra 256bytes of RAM - the most purist thing ever and eveything should use it for it is great and allows us to have better stuff...

The EasyFlash (the first version) is made from currently parts that are still in production (AFAIK), is reasonably priced for what it actually is and all the parts are through hole so it can be easily assembled, relatively speaking.

Quote:

Hell even a C128 is a faux pas...

For a while I wanted one real bad. The I realised that for something which is physically larger and has terrible GND noise, the first thing I'd be doing whenever I switch it on would by typing 'GO64' anyways.

Author:

OmegaMax [ Sat May 27, 2017 7:49 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

Hojo_Norem wrote:

the first thing I'd be doing whenever I switch it on would by typing 'GO64' anyways.

Anyone that enjoys games would do the same

Oziphantom wrote:

It is good to hear that other communities are just as random as C64 one SuperCPU ( aka 20mhz 65816 + 128K RAM expansion ) - 100% cheating not even a thing how could youRam Expansion Unit - Officially made by Commodore - cheating, its NOT a 64

I don't find using the REU cheating,being created by commodore and all but nobody wants to support it, nice for full screen,color scrolling games though...that's all I've done with it.

I feel bad for people that bought the SuperCPU,that has almost zero support from programmers,and it's not cheap.

Author:

Myask [ Mon May 29, 2017 2:26 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: Any Atari sprite algorithm you know of?

Real cheating would be attaching the PPU's EXT pins to duplicate expansion port signals (that you cut) and then 32xing your BG with full 16-color. (argh why aren't they already)

But I agree that cheating isn't really a meaningful term here; it's merely disapprobation trying to garb itself in an unapproachable raiment of morality.